Nightfall_at_Algemron h-3

by Диана Дуэйн

  Longer still would be the business of sorting out everything he now had in his head—a task Gabriel began to despair of ever completing before he died of old age. I was so bloody worried about not being human at the end of this, he thought late one night, and it turns out the problem was the reverse. I'm still too human. I'm terrified of losing this data.

  It seemed to be safely esconced inside him for the time being, and by the third day he found himself able to start to relax. That was his error, for he came out of the little head down at the end of the cell corridor that evening to find the door to the living area open. Gabriel went toward it, smiling slightly.

  Inside, sitting on one of the pulldown sofas and looking at the wall display, was Lorand Kharls.

  He stood up to greet Gabriel, which he did not have to do, and saw him seated first, as he might have done with an honored guest. Then he sat down and looked at him for a while.

  "Are you surprised to see me back here?" Gabriel asked at last.

  "Oh, no," the administrator replied. "I was expecting you."

  Gabriel looked at him. "I could have left."

  "I didn't expect that," Kharls said, "but indeed, here you are back. So I came partly to ask whether you have the proof you went for."

  "Not in any form that is likely to be useful," Gabriel said, "but I have it all."

  Kharls looked at him strangely. "What form is it in?"

  "Telepathic. Jacob Ricel dumped me the story of his life before he died."

  Kharls blinked. "No, you don't make this easy, do you?"

  "That doesn't seem to have been the story of my life recently," Gabriel said, "no."

  Kharls nodded and said, "Well, I would imagine that we should be able to find someone in the Concord Legal Service who's also a mindwalker, one certified highly enough that he would be empowered to assess your evidence. seeing that this is the only form in which it can be provided."

  Gabriel nodded. His main fear was that whatever mindwalker they found would either not be able to work out what had happened to the inside of his head and synchronize successfully with it or to clearly perceive all the nuances that Gabriel had acquired from Ricel while going over his memories. But it was a better outcome than he had hoped for, and all he could hope for, under the circumstances.

  "Where will the trial be held?" Gabriel asked.

  "On Lighthouse," Kharls said. "It's here now, and I will be moving my administrative work there for a while. If I can, during my own part in these proceedings, I will suggest to the adjudicators that your sentence, for I assume there will be one, should be served on Lighthouse as well. It strikes me that we might be able to use your services should you be inclined to give them."

  The man's presumption was amazing, Gabriel thought. "If you think that after everything I've been through, the way I was set up, that I would—"

  Then he stopped himself, for he knew that he would do exactly that.

  Damn it, Gabriel thought.

  "Oaths," Kharls said, "are an annoyance sometimes, but once taken, they seem almost impossible to remove. I see you have been unable to remove yours."

  "Kharls," Gabriel said, "are you a mindwalker?"

  He shook his head. "Heavens, no, and I resist any attempt to turn me into one, so keep your distance." "Then how do you always know what's going on around you?"

  "I keep my eyes open. Most people don't, Connor. They look but don't see, listen but don't hear—the great fault of our age, I think, and probably of most ages before it. The mind that already is made up and sees only what reinforces its own beliefs, no matter what else it perceives. that's our greatest enemy. Me, I don't have any beliefs. I just look at people."

  "And judge them."

  "That's what I'm paid for, partly."

  "There's something I want to talk to you about in that regard." "Your friend Ragnarsson," said Kharls, "and Delonghi."

  "Possibly I shouldn't say this without counsel present."

  Gabriel said, "but I very much wish I had killed her myself." "If I understand the circumstances correctly, you were trying." "And now Helm's going to take the blame for it."

  "Well," Kharls said, "there are some aspects of this business with which I can involve myself without there being a conflict of interest. This was a battlefield situation."

  "But it—"

  "Those who understand the issues," Kharls interrupted, "are already calling this not the Battle of Algemron, but the Battle of Argolos—with good reason, especially after we started to analyze the inbound data tracks on the External vessels. We realized that, excepting the sweep past Ilmater and Calderon, all of them were heading in your direction—right past Galvin or Alitar or anything else of interest in that part of the system, so a battlefield situation. Witnesses saw that Delonghi was infected with something clearly identifiable as not part of a normal human organism. Those witnesses will later be able to identify this as a teln, when we remove a tangle to show them from one of the sources we've acquired. Further investigation will, I believe, show that if the organism had succeeded in what it intended, then the whole battle would have been lost with tremendous equipment and personnel losses to the Concord and the associated stellar nations. I rather think all that will be set in the side of the scales containing acts to your friend's credit—not to mention his exploits later on down deeper in the facility, where he apparently bought you the time needed for reserves to arrive. An amazing feat, really. If he were in any of the services, I would have thought they would have decorated him so heavily he could barely stand, though plainly that would take a cartload of medals." Kharls stretched his legs out in front of him. "So I think you can put your mind to rest on that account."

  Gabriel nodded.

  "As for Delonghi." Kharls said, then fell silent a moment. "You know, I think the standard treatment for a spy when you know that one has been placed in your organization is the fungal treatment. Keep them in the dark, feed them." He smiled.

  "Waste products," Gabriel said.

  "It can be very difficult to do that," Kharls said. "I have suspected such emplacements in my own organization for a long while. It can be very hard to let them continue doing damage while trying to contain the larger damage they might do otherwise. or which might be done if they were forcefully removed. Off the record, I will thank you for doing me a favor. As for the others"—he shrugged—"there is no doing everything at once. These Externals are not a problem to be so lightly solved. We have won an engagement with them, but it will be many years, I think, before we have enough intelligence about them to know how major or minor an engagement it was. Meantime, good intel practice at my end involves leaving their present agents in place. and making sure I have a big enough bag of waste products handy."

  Gabriel nodded at that, too.

  "So," Kharls said. "I'll be moving over to Lighthouse for at least a few weeks. Meanwhile, you will be held here, in what I hope you will find reasonable comfort. I would have preferred something a little less spartan, but the Marines—"

  "I just saved a whole lot of their asses," Gabriel said, rather more hotly than he had intended, " and half the Verge, as an incidental. You'd think that would count for something."

  "Well, I would," Kharls said, "but you should know, as a former Marine yourself, that the lives of your own people count for more than anything else. If you don't take care of yourselves, who will? The deaths of the Marines from Falada and the pursuit of this trial remain important to the organization, and I am unwilling to do anything that might impair morale at this point. such as show undue favor to the accused."

  Gabriel made a rueful face. "Well, yes, I do understand, even though at the moment I don't much care for • , tt it.

  "That said," Kharls continued, "I am willing to listen to anything for which you might personally ask me." Gabriel looked at him quietly for a few moments then shook his head. "No," he said at last.

  "Unusual," said Kharls, after a pause nearly as long. "Maybe not," Gabriel said.

  Kharls wa
s quiet for a moment. "You have given us," he said, "perhaps the one tool that will turn this struggle in our favor. It may take years yet to tell, but this kind of defense leaves us freer than we would have thought possible to turn our attention to offense."

  "Always my preferred mode," Gabriel said.

  Kharls gave him a look. "I wonder. I was about to accuse you of mellowing, but possibly that's premature. It's probably just as well, for you have a lot more searching ahead of you after you serve your sentence. and that edge will help keep you alive."

  Gabriel nodded. "One question, though."

  "Certainly."

  "VoidCorp."

  "Yes," said Kharls. He stood and stretched again. "There is a situation that will want to be looked at closely in the coming weeks and months. It was interesting to note"—he looked sideways at Gabriel—"that during the battle, though there were a surprising number of them there, none of their vessels seemed willing to do anything on either side. It is. suggestive."

  "Yes," Gabriel said. "Almost as if they were unwilling to annoy a potential ally, before they knew which way things seemed to be going."

  Kharls nodded, then he seemed to stand indecisive for a moment. A strange sight, one which Gabriel had never seen. "Tell me something. You have apparently been through something. very strange. Who were they? The Precursors, I mean."

  It was a question that had been on Gabriel's mind. "Administrator," he replied, "I wish I knew. The Patterners seem to have been built to be very like them, and the Patterners have almost no sense of self as such. In what I have inside me now, which is everything that was there—a great library of practical science material mostly, and directions to other facilities—there are no images of them. Either they had a

  religious injunction against it, or"—he laughed once, softly—"or we are them come back again after a great failure for another chance at success. Who knows? The Patterner seemed to think so, but even it was unsure."

  Kharls nodded slowly.

  "And you," Kharls said. "Who are you, now?" "You mean, 'What are you?' " Gabriel said. "No," Kharls said. "Who?"

  Gabriel smiled slightly. "I am a man. Maybe not just another human,' but definitely a man, and very confused."

  "And not guilty."

  "Of murder," Gabriel said, "no. Not guilty."

  Kharls made for the door, paused there. "After this is all over, I think I can tell you that, should your oaths guide you in that direction—as they seem to have done for the last year—the Concord would deeply appreciate your service."

  "After this is over, Administrator," Gabriel said, "I would certainly meet you in the gym of your choosing and attempt to knock your block off for all the trouble you've caused me." He smiled, but it was one of those smiles he had borrowed from Grawl, with fangs showing. "After that we'll discuss service."

  "Yes," Kharls said, "that I did expect. I would say we will certainly have some dealings outside the judicial process." He went down to the door at the end of the corridor, rapped on it, and the guard let him out.

  The trial happened about a month and a half later and lasted for several weeks. They did not try to rush it. There was too much attention being paid to it in the media, for whom interest in Gabriel had greatly increased after news of the events at Argolos got out. Gabriel tried to contact his father during that period and got the expected response. Silence. It would be a while before that particular disjuncture in his personal universe would be healed, if ever.

  There were few surprises at the trial, except that it took so long to actually happen. Finding someone to take Gabriel's testimony was the main difficulty, but finally the Concord authorities found a fraal working on Lucullus who was able to see into Gabriel's mind in enough detail to do the necessary documentation.

  Gabriel's own written testimony, along with his elaboration of the material the fraal was able to elicit from him, was all entered into the record, and the evidence about Ricel was much argued.

  "Everything Connor has given us independently," Gabriel's defense attorney argued, "matches exactly the records concerning the development and use of this clone group as we understand it. To earlier data, we have no access."

  "It doesn't mean anything," countered the other prosecutor. "Just because this information is correct does not mean that the defendant is innocent of the actions of which he is accused. Indeed it could suggest, if looked at by an unfriendly eye, that the two were in even deeper collusion than the court originally thought."

  "Nonetheless, the information is accurate, and this must be taken into account."

  It went on for days like that, and Gabriel knew where it was all going, even without telepathy. The judges' minds were all too open a book. Kharls himself was not adjudicating, much to Gabriel's disappointment, but it was precisely because of the contact between them that he had disqualified himself.

  When the discovery stage was over and the nonevidentiary phase began, Enda was the first one to request the right to testify before the panel. After that came Helm, Delde Sota, Angela, Grawl, and the Marines who had been present at Delonghi's killing (of which Helm had been acquitted days before in a separate proceeding). This was the hardest part for Gabriel, for he knew that, while the judges were listening, they had their minds made up already. The pain his friends were in affected him directly, despite his attempts to shut it out. He wound up taking lessons with the fraal who had taken his testimony on how to erect personal barriers.

  "You know," the fraal said, after the last of four wearying lessons was done, "that you cannot keep your friends out of your mind, anyway."

  Gabriel sighed at that and lay awake that night, listening to the others worrying down in their ships attached to the Lighthouse's spars. The next day was sentencing, and he knew what was going to happen. He had said nothing to them, because it would have depressed them. An extra day of hope is better.

  The following morning he was brought in for the sentencing and received the only surprise of the proceeding. The judges announced that there was one more nonevidentiary statement to be made.

  Elinke Dareyev walked in.

  Gabriel sat there and, to his own astonishment, began to shake as Elinke spoke.

  "Your honors," she said, "mental reservation does not protect one from charges of perjury. Maybe it would just be simpler to say that in the aftermath of the Falada shuttle disaster, I testified that Jacob Ricel was not working for Concord Intel in any capacity. That was true. However, I did know that he was VoidCorp. and I withheld this information from the court."

  There were very few people in the courtroom, not enough for there to be a great ruckus of any kind, but the judges immediately retired to review all the evidence with an eye to this sudden new development.

  Gabriel, for his own part, could only sit numbly as Elinke made her way out of the courtroom. The two of them would spend the next several days elaborating on the information behind that statement. She went past him, and Gabriel felt, like a cool draft, that terrible ambivalence in her, the division between kindness and cruelty, a line she always had trouble straddling. I might have known this could happen, he thought. There had been the matter of a door left open one night, without explanation, on Schmetterling. He had heard that awful, anguished thought, my poor crew. and later, I always said you were the devil himself. He had not done that favor for her. She would not have accepted it from him if he had, but for her crew.

  She went by him, cool, composed, the uniform perfect, and glanced down as she passed. "Now all debts are paid," she said as she passed, and the security people went after her.

  Four days later Gabriel stood up for the sentencing and heard the chief judge read the long statement that started out detailing the events on Falada and ended with those on Schmetterling. There was a brief dry mention of the extenuating circumstances and the great assistance the defendant had lent to the Concord forces at the Battle of Argolos.

  "Of the first charge of murder and all subsequent charges relating thereto," the chiefjudge sai
d, "we find the defendant not guilty. The circumstances require us, however, to find him guilty on twenty counts of manslaughter in the second degree. With mitigating circumstances considered, we sentence the defendant to ten years' confinement, to be served in the Marine confinement facility on the Galactic Concord vessel Lighthouse, beginning immediately and minus time served."

  That was all. Everyone stood up, and the guards came for Gabriel. Enda, Helm, Delde Sota, Angela, and Grawl were waiting behind the bar separating court from spectators, and their faces were sad. Helm looked positively dour behind his new eyepatch.

  "You knew it was going to happen," Gabriel told them.

  "Well." Enda said. "I think Sunshine will be riding with the Lighthouse for a while."

  "We'll come and go," Helm said, "but we won't be far, not for long." He looked around. "This is a nice place. good facilities here. You could get used to not roughing it for ten years or so."

  Gabriel smiled at him and Delde Sota and then turned to Angela and Grawl.

  "We'll be here," Angela said.

  "I know," Gabriel said. "Thanks. thank you all."

  They took him away to the comfortable but windowless cell that would be his home for the next ten years.

  Chapter Twenty

  Two evenings later, Lorand Kharls came by to see him. "So," Kharls said, "no surprises."

  Gabriel lay on the bed in the small bare room. He nodded. This was Phorcys all over again, but at least there were Marines outside this cell. Also, Gabriel was not quite who he had been nearly three years before, and the walls seemed rather more transparent this time.

  "None?" Gabriel said. "Not even Elinke?"